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Which is better skip question or wild guess ?

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Which is better skip question or wild guess ?

by Awanish Kumar » Tue May 31, 2016 3:25 am
Hi..
This question is for experienced GMAT instructors only.

What would you advice to skip questions or wild guess in following scenario.
1) When no clue about the question.
2) When some what near but not absolutely sure.
3) When running out of time. Like 5 questions in 2 minutes.

Please respond with strategies with respect to both the sections Aptitude and Verbal because as per some sources which i have read, we need to have different strategies for both Aptitude and Verbal.
It is more punishable to leave questions than to give incorrect answer in Aptitude. While is ok to skip questions in Verbal.
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by MartyMurray » Tue May 31, 2016 4:05 am
Hi Awanish.

First, to get to the next question you have to answer the current question. So in most cases there is no skipping of questions.

The only time you can leave questions unanswered is at the end of a section. In other words, you can just leave the last few questions unanswered.

At the end a wrong answer is simply a wrong answer, whereas there is a penalty for not answering questions. So you are better off guessing than leaving any unanswered.

Generally, the best way to guess, of course, is to guess on questions which you have little idea how to answer, as you go along, rather than waiting until the end and guessing the answers to questions that you may have readily answered correctly.

That having been said, generally it is the case that longer strings of right answers result in higher scores. So don't be too quick to guess during the test.
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by Awanish Kumar » Tue May 31, 2016 11:00 pm
Dear Marty,
Thanks for your reply..

Suppose i have 2 minutes time and 5 questions left. What would you suggest ? To concentrate on atlest 1 or 2 questions to get it correct or take a wild guess to attempt all 5 questions which has a chance that i might answer all 5 questions incorrect.
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by MartyMurray » Wed Jun 01, 2016 2:31 am
Awanish Kumar wrote:Suppose i have 2 minutes time and 5 questions left. What would you suggest ? To concentrate on atlest 1 or 2 questions to get it correct or take a wild guess to attempt all 5 questions which has a chance that i might answer all 5 questions incorrect.
In that specific case, I would take some time, maybe a minute, and seek to answer the first of the five, and then, so as not to get penalized for not finishing, wild guess the remaining four.
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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Wed Jun 01, 2016 8:16 am
Awanish Kumar wrote:Hi..
This question is for experienced GMAT instructors only.

What would you advice to skip questions or wild guess in following scenario.
1) When no clue about the question.
2) When some what near but not absolutely sure.
3) When running out of time. Like 5 questions in 2 minutes.

Please respond with strategies with respect to both the sections Aptitude and Verbal because as per some sources which i have read, we need to have different strategies for both Aptitude and Verbal.
It is more punishable to leave questions than to give incorrect answer in Aptitude. While is ok to skip questions in Verbal.
See here for a nice discussion on mba.com: https://www.mba.com/us/the-gmat-blog-hub ... ssing.aspx
Veritas Prep | GMAT Instructor

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by [email protected] » Wed Jun 01, 2016 8:59 am
Hi Awanish Kumar,

Have you taken any practice CATs yet? If you have, then you know that you can't "skip" questions in any of the sections - you have to answer the question that's in front of you before you can see the next question. Any questions that you don't answer are marked as incorrect and incur a penalty, so you MUST make sure to answer every question in each section, even if you're just taking a guess.

All of that having been said, the GMAT is a predictable Exam, so there are Tactics you can practice and patterns that you can take advantage of so that you rarely have to take a 'blind' guess.

1) How long have you been studying?
2) What materials have you used?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
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